operations," to have been effected during the era of existing species of
corals. Perhaps you can tell me, for I am really curious to know...(47/3.
The author referred to is of course Darwin.)

Now, although there is nothing in my works to warrant the building up of
continents in the Atlantic and Pacific even since the Eocene period, yet,
as some of the rocks in the central Alps are in part Eocene, I begin to
think that all continents and oceans may be chiefly, if not all, post-
Eocene, and Dana's "Atlantic Ocean" of the Lower Silurian is childish (see
the Anniversary Address, 1856). (47/4. Probably Dana's Anniversary
Address to the "American Association for the Advancement of Science,"
published in the "Proceedings" 1856.) But how far you are at liberty to
call up continents from "the vasty deep" as often as you want to convey a
Helix from the United States to Europe in Miocene or Pliocene periods is a
question; for the ocean is getting deeper of late, and Haughton says the
mean depth is eleven miles! by his late paper on tides. (47/5. "On the
Depth of the Sea deducible from Tidal Observations" ("Proc. Irish Acad."
Volume VI., page 354, 1853-54).) I shall be surprised if this turns out
true by soundings.

I thought your mind was expanding so much in regard to time that you would
have been going ahead in regard to the possibility of mountain-chains being
created in a fraction of the period required to convert a swan into a
goose, or vice versa. Nine feet did the Rimutaka chain of New Zealand gain
in height in January, 1855, and a great earthquake has occurred in New
Zealand every seven years for half a century nearly. The "Washingtonia"
(Californian conifer) (47/6. Washingtonia, or Wellingtonia, better known
as Sequoia. Asa Gray, writing in 1872, states his belief that "no Sequoia
now alive can sensibly antedate the Christian era" ("Scientific Papers,"
II., page 144).) lately exhibited was four thousand years old, so that one